Interns Prior to 2012

Kersten Barton, a senior in high school at Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences, was an outstanding intern with Dr. Rechele Brooks. During her internship, Kersten worked on an independent project to investigate the pointing behaviors of one-year-old infants. She also assisted with ongoing research projects in the Joint Visual Attention Lab, which is housed at the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences. She excelled as a research assistant and quickly learned about the daily details of conducting research with infants. We expect that her enthusiasm for science will lead her to great things as she takes on her next challenge – her freshman year at Carleton College.

Ellie Henningsgaard spent spring term of her senior year (Interlake High School in Bellevue, WA) as an intern at I-LABS. She worked in Dr. Patricia Kuhl’s Speech Research Laboratory. Ellie was a tremendous asset, contributing effort to four projects during the term that included collecting data and training on methodology used in speech perception experiments with young infants. Ellie is currently attending Tufts University.

Loan Nguyen was a Gates Millennium Scholar pursuing a degree in Medical Technology when she completed an internship at I-LABS that was sponsored by Casey Family Programs. She is currently attending graduate school in Laboratory Medicine. While her undergraduate education was focused on understanding cellular level functions, her internship at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences allowed her to work along the opposite end of the continuum by studying whole systems neuroscience. Her interests included the use of neuroimaging tools such as ERP and MEG, and the study of autism.

Niki Petrakos began working with Dr. Rechele Brooks in the Joint Visual Attention (JVA) Lab at I-LABS as a sophomore at Interlake High School. Having already volunteered at the UW Medical Center, Niki wanted to experience a very different, yet equally important, part of medicine – research. With an interest in biology and the medical field, she was able to participate in various studies involving social interaction and infant development. Based on her amazing experiences at I-LABS, Niki has a better idea of what she wants to pursue in the future.

William Poole was a student at Eastside Preparatory School in Kirkland, WA when he spent 6 months at I-LABS completing an internship to learn more about brain imaging tools. With a passion for biology and physics, William rotated through various labs learning about cognitive development of very young children and the neuroscience tools available to study them: ERP, fMRI and MEG. Now studying at Brown University, William reported that the I-LABS internship sparked an interest in expanding his collegiate studies to encompass neuroscience in addition to computer science. William’s enthusiasm and curiosity were energizing to all who worked with him, and we have been delighted to take part in helping train next generation scientists like William.